ICE deporting more immigrants from Montgomery County than Philadelphia

Marshall Street is the main commercial corridor for Norristown's Latino businesses. The town's Latino population has skyrocketed in the last decade, bringing economic vitality, and also an increase in the presence of federal immigration enforcement. (Kimberly Paynter/for NewsWorks)

More people have been deported from Montgomery County than from Philadelphia since police began sharing information with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Montgomery County began sharing information about six months earlier, but Philadelphia is about twice as big, with roughly two and a half times as many foreign-born residents.

Deportation Statistics for Philadelphia and Montgomery Counties

Deportations

Start date

Names submitted for review

Serious criminal convictions

Less-serious convictions

Immigration issues

Total

Montgomery Co.

12/16/08

71,402

93

200

186

479

Philadelphia Co.

7/21/09

175,265

81

82

226

389

SOURCE: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement

This table shows the number of people whose immigration status was submitted for review and the number of resulting convictions leading to deportations.

These statistics apply to the subset of cases handled as part of the Secure Communities information-sharing program between local law enforcement and the feds. ICE says it can't break the numbers down town by town, but by most accounts, a lot of Montgomery County's cases seem to be coming from Norristown, the county seat, population 34,324.

On an evening in late March, Ernesto Cruz Garcia was in front of his house in Norristown with his three children and their dog.

"A lot of police was just started making a circle around the house," recounted his eldest daughter, Daniela. "The police were coming. They came out with a gun, pointing at my dad and my brothers.

Daniela said she could see the red lights of the guns' sights on her father's and brothers' foreheads.

Garcia works in construction. He's a gentle-looking man. He has a lisp and always looks like he is always smiling, even talking about difficult subjects.

A group of policemen surrounded his daughter, Daniela, and said she'd see what would happen to her father if she didn't answer. She admitted that, yes, the family was illegal. Then the police took Garcia away.

Federal and local cooperation

It's unclear precisely what happened that led to the arrest of Ernesto Cruz Garcia. We'll return to that in a later story.

But what is certain is that both both ICE and Norristown police were involved in the apprehension and that they were in close contact the day officers showed up at Garcia's home. Police Chief Russell Bono said that officers received a tip from ICE that Garcia was selling drugs from his front porch. He is undocumented. Police delivered him to ICE. He denies the charges and is fighting deportation.

"We're not ICE agents, but as the chief of police I'm not going to turn down another law enforcement agency's request for assistance," said Bono.

Bono said the same about ICE's presence at recent traffic management checkpoints. State police stop and check for people who don't have a driver's license, registration or insurance. ICE waits with local police around the corner, taking only those who meet their criteria, typically people with criminal records.

Local police are not always involved. ICE says it makes arrests on its own as well, based on intelligence.

However, Latinos in particular, including American citizens, report that Norristown's local officers have asked for immigration papers or speculated they do not have them. Chief Bono maintained that he has an absolute ban on asking about immigration status.

"They think that asking for a drivers' license and owner's card is asking for papers," he thinks.

Sue Soriano said she's never seen any violation of Chief Bono's ban.

"I am a Norristown resident for the past six years," noted Soriano, a lawyer, originally from the Dominican Republic. She feels the town welcomes Latinos. As some Latino advocates have called for closer scrutiny of the police department in recent weeks, she even held a press conference at a friend's Mexican grocery.

"I support the police department in that way because we don't want criminals in our town," said Soriano. "We have our children, and we have a good quality of life."

Attorney Brennan Gian-Grasso of Nationalities Service Center in Philadelphia said that with ICE and the Norristown Police Department, he sees a collaboration between two willing partners.

Casting a wide net

"We're seeing a huge number of cases come from Norristown where the Norristown Police were the initiators of the stop or were involved in police business in which they brought along immigration," said Gian-Grasso. "But what happens is it means that a lot of people are getting caught up in the net for extremely minor [infractions] — whether they're traffic violations or even cases of mistaken identity."

The situation has Norristown buzzing. Residents and Latino organizers began collecting petition signatures, asking the police to stop racially profiling Latinos and recruit a more diverse police force. The organizing on both sides is local, but occurs within a larger national debate.

In El Paso, in the spring of 2011, President Obama delivered a speech laying out an agenda for immigration reform. And introducing the nation to what would come to be called "prosecutorial discretion." The administration would focus on deporting serious criminals, not those caught with minor violations.

"We are not doing this haphazardly," said President Barack Obama in a speech in El Paso in 2011. Laying out an agenda for immigration reporm, he introduced the nation to what would be called during his administration, 'prosecutorial discretion.'

"We are focusing our limited resources on violent offenders and people convicted of crimes; not families, not folks who are just looking to scrape together an income."

Brennan Gian-Grasso said Philadelphia's immigration courts are so jammed they're already scheduling hearings into 2014. The hope was "prosecutorial discretion" would shorten the backlog.

"Certainly I have several clients here who have a criminal conviction — and then that's a different situation but I also have lots of clients who have no criminal background whatsoever and you know have gotten caught up," said Gian-Grasso.

It's not clear to me, he said, that deporting people such as Ernesto Cruz Garcia is making communities safer; and it doesn't appear to fit the federal policy model.

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